HELP please....trying to gain permission to someones hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter stupar
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stupar

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Ok set the scene.

I've been handed a hard drive out of a friends laptop to recover personal content - photos, videos etc.
Under windows 10 I have gone through the motions of taking ownership and trying to secure full control permissions of the drive but once done I still cant see any personal files.

Am I missing something and/or is there anything else I can do to get access?

Thanks!
 
Usually you just plug in the drive and you should be able to view the contents like any other. Don't understand the need to take ownership?
 
I believe because it is an NTFS drive from another computer it has certain restrictions.
I have full admin rights for my laptop to gain permission so I'm out of ideas.

When I double click on the hard drive I can see all the content relating to the OS and installed programs but I cannot see any content of the persons named user folder where they would store their personal files
 
In your first sentence you have written that you need to recover personal content. Reading between the lines, has the personal content been deleted thus being the reason why you can't see it? You could use something like Recuva or if it's been formatted / defragmented a few times you could opt for a tool like Autopsy; though this requires a bit more knowledge.

James
 
James that is a logical view point and could be a logical explanation.

I was assured the drive has not been touched since the laptop failed but I will try recovery tools just in case
 
Do you know the method / reason why the files were lost in the first place? Do you know where they were stored in the first place?

From memory, I believe that Recuva gives you the option to search in specific areas like My Pictures or whatever it's called these days.

James
 
The files weren't lost.
The laptop from which the hard drive came from failed.

So I suggested putting the HD in a caddy to copy personal files to a USB drive.
 
Try booting using a linux live CD instead of windows, you may be able to read the full contents of the disk that way.
 
It will be an inherited rights issue, you need to take ownership as your local admin then run a replace on all child objects and that should do it but you might have to bash away a few times to get past the old ACL.
 
What Mr Bump said, sounds like someone may have set permissions or shared the drive at some time, I've had issues like this before with my own drives, mainly as most of mine are shared over the network, tbh it has been a nightmare in the past as permissions can be different for each folder, then they need setting one by one! Admin re file systems has caused me some grief over the years!
 
If you have already run a disk check on the drive you want to recover, it might be there is a simple file structure corruption and it's messing up your ability to take ownership / access.
 
stupar said:
... windows 10 ...

Am I missing something and/or is there anything else I can do to get access?
Click to expand...
Use a different operating system : Linux, old Windows XP.
Permissions can have no relevance in those cases.
The first time I encountered such nonsense was in Windows Vista, gave me a shudder down my spine.
 
Tried Ubuntu which gave me more visible folders including My Documents etc but still no personal files.
Alas I have given up! Looks like the hard drive owner will be taking it to a specialist.
 
Did you run a winDir tree / sequoia type programme on it?
They show the files and folder sizes in a visual manner which makes things easier to track down on a cluttered directory structure.
 
Ulfric M Douglas said:
Did you run a winDir tree / sequoia type programme on it?
They show the files and folder sizes in a visual manner which makes things easier to track down on a cluttered directory structure.
Click to expand...
Never tried that to be honest.
Will attempt tonight if I have time
 
Photorec in linux is pretty good.

So you could see my docs? what was missing?
 
There should have been approx 2000 photos present in the my documents folder. If they are there then I can't see them.
The owner of the hard drive tried to do their own recovery of the photos but apparently half way through the process they received an error saying "access denied".
Its possible that has had an impact.
Either way I am running out of options for solutions.
 
Have you tried changing your global folder settings to show hidden files/folders?

Having the right permission usually just means the difference between being able to access files.. not weather you can physically see them ? AFAIK? :)



ADDYONBIT Posted before seeing the bit about original owner having problem...........so see me next reply :)
 
Last edited:
stupar said:
There should have been approx 2000 photos present in the my documents folder. If they are there then I can't see them.
The owner of the hard drive tried to do their own recovery of the photos but apparently half way through the process they received an error saying "access denied".
.
Click to expand...

Haaa... then i doubt its anyhting so do with permissions.. think your going to have to look into recovery software.. I doubt its a simple case of who own or who has permission... its more a case of a currupt HD if it happened to himself... again just IMHO :)
 
Get hold of Hiren's BootCD. Run XP from the CD and all should be revealed assuming there is something there.
 
If they were my files, I would take a bit copy of the drive for safety. I would then run Recuva under Linux which doesn't care about windows permissions but it takes a long time certainly hours maybe days to piece all the fragments together of deleted files. One other feature is that you lose the filenames and get a generic letter-number.jpg type of file back sometimes several times for the same graphics file depending on numer of edits performed and temporary files recorded. I have done this on a formatted drive (are you sure? -Yes- oops) and it took days in a graphics viewer to sort out the resultant files and all the duplicates that the system takes.
But I got all my files back.
 
I once had a drive which would't read in one external caddy, but refitting it into a different model worked.
I would also try different motherboard sata slots for the lead, 'cos odd things can make a difference.
 
I think I have exhausted all options.
Having a laptop only means I am limited to the one HDD port.
That said access to my hard drive requires a complete strip down which is more than the task is worth.

I've tried ownership/permissions from within Windows 10

Ubuntu boot CD

Hirans boot CD (which didn't work due to UEFI secure boot)

I ran pirifoms recuva with a nil return for family photos.

Hell I even plugged the hard drive into my bluray player to see if images were viewable.

All of the above gave a nil return.
 
I'm surprised you are giving up having ONLY tried to access the disc through your win10 laptop.
I imagine that would be the most difficult route and I would never do anything technical with a thing like that.
I might go as modern as a win7 desktop for the quite nice formatting options ...
but I would definitely use a desktop with accessible motherboard and a couple of external caddies/docks.
 
I don't have access to any other computer hardware so I am naturally limited.
As my help was a mere favour I don't have loads of time to try options out with my own current abilities
 
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